A machine navy has taken the sea. You have one warship. Aim the guns, lead your shots, send torpedoes under their bows, drop depth charges on the submarines and shoot the drones out of the sky. Then go after the big ones: the Bulwark, the Leviathan, the Carrier and, at the end of it all, the Kraken.
Press play
The game opens full-screen on this page. It is a mouse-and-keyboard game first: click the game and the mouse aims. It also has touch controls for tablets and phones. If it is slow, it switches itself to Low graphics. New visitors first choose Home or School and accept the Rules, Terms and Privacy Policy.
Controls
W and S: change speed in steps, from astern to full ahead. A and D: steer.
Mouse: look around. Look at a ship and the bracket locks on. Click: fire every turret that can turn that way.
Shells pick themselves: HE for boats and towers, AP for big ships. Press 1 or 2 to choose yourself, X to go back to automatic. Q: torpedoes, aimed ahead of the locked ship. E: a missile at the locked ship. F: depth charges off the back.
C: smoke screen. R: repair kit: puts out fires, stops flooding and fixes broken engines, rudders and turrets. Shift: flank speed for six seconds.
Right click (hold) or Z: binoculars for long shots. Mouse wheel: camera nearer or further. Esc or P: pause.
Touch: left thumb steers and sets speed, right thumb looks, with Fire, HE/AP, Torp, Missile, Depth, Smoke, Fix, Flank and Zoom buttons.
New to it? The first mission starts with training that waits for you to do each thing once, and the early missions go easier on you. A coach line at the bottom of the screen always tells you the one thing to do next: close in, lock on, fire, repair, dodge a torpedo. If nobody has hit you for a while, your crew patches the hull back up to half.
Hitting things
Look at a machine to lock on. The fire-control computer works out where the ship will be when your shells land and aims there for you. The bar under the bracket fills as the lock gets better, and HIT % shows how likely a salvo is to land.
Your shells land somewhere inside the white ellipse on the sea. It gets bigger with range, a fresh lock, flank speed and hard turns. Steady the ship and hold the lock for tight salvos.
Machines jink: when a target turns, the lock gets worse and the shells already in the air can miss.
HE shells do steady damage and start fires: best on small boats. AP shells hit big ships hard and can strike the citadel, but they go straight through small boats and bounce off a ship pointed at you.
The same works on you: point your bow at a big ship and its AP shells bounce off. Turn side-on to fire every turret.
Lucky hits break things: engines (half speed), the rudder (slow turns) or a turret. R fixes them all.
The ring is split into one piece for each turret. Green is ready, yellow is reloading, grey means that turret can't turn that way. Turn your side to the enemy and every turret can fire.
A smoke screen (C) hides you: machines can't fire guns or missiles through it, but you can still shoot out. Torpedoes still come.
Torpedoes are slow but hit very hard, and leave the ship flooding. Fire them where a ship is going to be.
The machine navy
Drone boats: fast, and they blow up when they touch you. Shoot them early.
Gunboats, destroyers and cruisers: they circle at their best range and shoot back.
Torpedo boats: a warning sounds and a red line shows each torpedo. Turn into it or away from it.
Submarines: hidden under the water, shown in blue on the radar when they are close. Drive over them and press F, or catch them when they come up to fire.
Missile boats and drone planes: your flak guns shoot at them and their missiles by themselves.
Gun towers and radar towers stand on the islands, out of reach of torpedoes.
Nine missions on three seas
The Shallows: First Watch, Convoy Run (get the cargo ships home) and Fortress Isle (knock out the gun towers, then the Bulwark).
Storm Belt: Wolfpack (submarines), Air Raid (keep the oil platform afloat for three minutes) and Leviathan, a battleship far bigger than yours.
Iron Coast: Lights Out (radar towers), Flat Top (a carrier full of drones) and The Iron Tide, where the Kraken waits under the water.
Endless Tide on each sea: wave after wave until you sink.
Three stars: win, keep more than half your hull, and land 30% of your shells.
The shipyard
Lance (destroyer): fast, torpedoes, depth charges. Rampart (cruiser, 3,500 credits): three triple turrets and four missiles. Titan (battleship, 8,000 credits): huge guns, small guns that fire by themselves, no torpedoes.
Upgrades fit every ship: faster loaders, thicker armour, bigger engines, more tubes, missile racks, flak guns and a damage crew.
Paint costs credits and changes the fight: Dazzle stripes make machine gunners lead you badly, Storm blue spreads their shells, Night makes long shots miss and Desert pays 10% more for every job.
Credits come from every machine you sink and every mission you finish. Hard pays more.
How it is made
Iron Tide has no game engine. It uses the same small 3D renderer as Steel Front, with water that reflects a painted sky.
Every ship, turret, plane and island is built from boxes, cylinders and height maps by code. The islands are different on every sea.
The sea is six travelling waves added together. The same waves lift and roll every ship, so a battleship rides the swell differently from a drone boat.
Shells really fly: each one follows its arc and is checked against every hull it passes.
A test bot played all nine missions before release, with every ship and on every difficulty.
The music and every sound are made by code. Your progress is saved on this device only.
